Page 145 - America Unincorporated

117 No country on the globe is so happily situated, or so internally capable of raising a fleet as
America. Tar, timber, iron, and cordage are her natural produce. We need go abroad for nothing.
Whereas the Dutch, who make large profits by hiring out their ships of war to the Spaniards and
Portuguese, are obliged to import most of the materials they use. We ought to view the building a
fleet as an article of commerce, it being the natural manufactory of this country. It is the best money
we can lay out. A navy when finished is worth more than it cost, and is that nice point in national
policy in which commerce and protection are united. Let us build. If we want them not, we can sell,
and by that means replace our paper currency with ready gold and silver.
118 In point of manning a fleet, people in general run into great errors; it is not necessary that one
33
fourth part should be sailors. The Terrible privateer, Captain Death, stood the hottest engagement
of any ship last war, yet had not twenty sailors on board, though her complement of men was
upwards of two hundred. A few able and social sailors will soon instruct a sufficient number of
active landsmen in the common work of a ship. Wherefore, we never can be more capable to begin
on maritime matters than now, while our timber is standing, our fisheries blocked up, and our
sailors and shipwrights out of employ. Men of war, of seventy and eighty guns, were built forty
years ago in New England, and why not the same now? Shipbuilding is America’s greatest pride,
and in which she will, in time, excel the whole world. The great empires of the east are mostly
inland, and consequently excluded from the possibility of rivaling her. Africa is in a state of
barbarism; and no power in Europe hath either such an extent of coast or such an internal supply of
materials. Where nature hath given the one, she hath withheld the other. To America only hath she
been liberal of both. The vast empire of Russia is almost shut out from the sea, wherefore her
boundless forests, her tar, iron, and cordage are only articles of commerce.
119 In point of safety, ought we to be without a fleet? We are not
the little people now which we were sixty years ago. At that time “In point of safety, ought
we might have trusted our property in the streets, or fields rather, we to be without a fleet?
and slept securely without locks or bolts to our doors and We are not the little
windows. The case is now altered, and our methods of defense
ought to improve with our increase of property. A common people now which we
pirate, twelve months ago, might have come up the Delaware were sixty years ago.”
[River] and laid the city of Philadelphia under instant
contribution for what sum he pleased, and the same might have happened to other places. Nay, any
daring fellow in a brig of fourteen or sixteen guns might have robbed the whole Continent and
carried off half a million of money. These are circumstances which demand our attention and point
out the necessity of naval protection.
120 Some perhaps will say that after we have made it up with Britain, she will protect us. Can they be
so unwise as to mean that she will keep a navy in our harbors for that purpose? Common sense will
tell us that the power which hath endeavored to subdue us is, of all others, the most improper to
defend us. Conquest may be effected under the pretense of friendship; and ourselves, after a long
and brave resistance, be at last cheated into slavery. And if her ships are not to be admitted into our
harbors, I would ask, how is she to protect us? A navy three or four thousand miles off can be of
little use, and on sudden emergencies, none at all. Wherefore, if we must hereafter protect
ourselves, why not do it for ourselves? Why do it for another?
121 The English list of ships of war is long and formidable, but not a tenth part of them are at any one
time fit for service, numbers of them not in being; yet their names are pompously continued in the
list if only a plank be left of the ship: and not a fifth part of such as are fit for service can be spared
on any one station at one time. The East and West Indies, Mediterranean, Africa, and other parts
over which Britain extends her claim, make large demands upon her navy. From a mixture of

33 The English privateer Terrible , commanded by Capt. William Death, was captured by the French after a furious battle in late 1756, the first year of
the Seven Years War. Thomas Paine would have been a sailor on the Terrible had he not been persuaded by his father to remain in England. Later
Paine served several months on the English privateer King of Prussia.

National Humanities Center  Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776, 3d ed., full text incl. Appendix 21